The combustion integrity of the flame to identify clean combustion in gas burning equipment in residential, commercial and light industrial facilities has heretofore been conducted by visual inspection of the flame. A qualified technician could make a visual observation of the flame and the residue left at the draft divertor, and some judgment could then reasonably be made as to the quality of the flame. Other than visual inspection, there has not been any equipment or special procedures to test for complete and clean combustion, particularly at levels to identify subtle problems that could be corrected inexpensively.
The Energy Conservation Act of 1987 required that all new equipment involving combustion must be fan assisted. In recent years, it has become apparent that a visual check by a technician of the flame was not good enough when fan assisted combustion was involved. Fan assisted combustion can be in the form of induced draft, or forced draft. Technicians have been missing or misdiagnosing many combustion problems because of reliance on visual identification. Sometimes with fan assisted combustion, the flame cannot be seen or cannot be easily seen. In many cases there is not even a small peep hole available for examination of the flame.
Sampling the flue for O.sub.2 or CO.sub.2 is not the answer to the foregoing problem because oxygen deficiency due to low combustion air flow is not one of the most common causes of poor combustion. In the majority of combustion problems, there is sufficient O.sub.2 left in the flue products. Thus, conventional equipment for sampling gases within the flue could not solve the problem.
When there is a problem in the combustion process, the CO levels increase. It doesn't matter if the source of the problem is oxygen deficiency, poor primary air entrainment, or flame impingement. Measuring CO levels may indicate the existence of a problem, but CO levels do not identify specific problems and it is not known within the industry what levels of CO signify trouble.
It is, therefore, a principal object of this invention to provide a method to identify the combustion integrity in fan assisted equipment.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method to identify combustion integrity of fan assisted equipment which can be easily and quickly practiced, and which can be economically conducted with existing equipment.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.